CHI

Welcome to CHI 2010! CHI is the leading international conference in Human Computer Interaction and it is the archival material -- especially the papers and notes -- that establishes its academic credentials. We believe the paper and notes published here represent some of the best current work in the field.

The HCI field is continuing to grow from strength to strength and continuing to expand and diversify. While this is very positive growth, it also places huge demands on the reviewing processes. To deal with this challenge, CHI2009 introduced wide ranging and innovative changes to help make it more manageable, while also ensuring that authors/papers are given the most expert attention, and to raise awareness of the diverse types of good CHI papers and the standards expected of them.

It will take several years before the full impact of these changes are known and for this reason it was important to continue with this new model for CHI2010, with some minor changes of course to reflect 'lessons learned'. We split the program committee into eight topical subcommittees, combining two of the CHI2009 subcommittees, and updated the names and descriptions of some of them. Each subcommittee comprised subcommittee chairs and various associate chairs (ACs) knowledgeable on the topic. Authors selected the subcommittee that they felt could best handle their submission. We believe this has worked well to improve the match of a submission to AC and ultimately to reviewers, to have more focused and relevant discussions in the program committee meeting, and to minimize the load on individual volunteers. We continued with combining papers and notes to ensure a consistent decision standard across both submission types, while also being clear about the different requirements for a 10 versus 4 page submission. And we continued the use of contribution types with the aim of communicating to authors and reviewers that there are many different and equally valid ways that a CHI submission can contribute to the field.

This year, there were 1346 submissions, comprising 878 full papers and 468 notes. In line with the growth of the field, this is the highest number of submissions ever to CHI. Of these, we accepted 22%. The papers/notes committee involved 139 volunteers from across the world: 2 co-chairs, 17 sub-committee chairs, and 120 associate chairs (ACs). Each AC managed 10-14 submissions, and personally recruited at least three - sometimes more - referees knowledgeable in the paper's topic. Refereeing was through blind review. Each referee returned a recommendation along with a detailed review. Authors had opportunity to rebut these reviews, allowing them to address matters of fact, which were then taken into account for the final decision. Additional reviews were sometimes solicited and the majority of papers were read by a second AC as well. Overall 6223 individual reviews were produced in this process. Committee members then attended a two-day meeting in Atlanta in December. The committees were extremely careful in making decisions, with many submissions receiving multiple discussions before and during the program committee meetings. While no review process can execute perfectly in every case, everyone involved worked very hard to ensure a fair process and to encourage the consistency and quality of CHI reviews and the resulting decisions across committees. The amount of time and effort entailed in this review process, especially for such a huge number of papers, cannot be underestimated nor undervalued. We praise the commitment of the sub-committee chairs, associate chairs,and referees for their amazing hard work and their service ethic. All gave up considerable time to this process. The various chairs also paid for this privilege, traveling from all around the world to the CHI PC meeting at their own expense. All chairs have our gratitude and deserve the sincere appreciation of the entire HCI community. Finally, the various committees nominated 5% of the submissions for Honorable Mention, with the top 2% of these papers nominated as Best Papers. A separate committee then deliberated over the Best Paper nominations, to select the 1% of papers and notes to receive a best paper award. In total, as you will see in the program, 14 submissions were honored as best papers, while 53 were designated as honorable mentions. Congratulations to all authors who achieved this significant status!

We hope you enjoy the diverse and dynamic program created for you by your community peers (authors, chairs and reviewers) and that you are challenged and inspired to move the field forward even more.